Lev Lafayette's journal

For three days last week, I attended HPCAsia (remotely, of course) which, true to most conferences of this ilk, concentrated on the application of some of the world's most powerful computing systems (the world's number #1 in Tokyo) to the sort of mathematical and scientific problems that require it. It is pleasing that the ACM has published proceedings that will be free for the next two weeks. Due to the nature of my own role, I am particularly interested in new system and chip architectures, especially when people try some interesting heterogeneous combinations (e.g., FPGAs and GPUs for astrophysics). Appropriately, my work has tapped me on the shoulder to produce a short comparison in HPC systems between Intel and AMD which I'll do with some wry amusement - following the International Supercomputing Conference in 2018, I made suggestions of looking at this following the EU's lead; "And the turtle did indeed move". I also announced on Friday four HPC training workshops with a new one on "High Performance and Parallel Python on HPC", somewhat of a necessity as so many of the current generation use Python by default and the fact it's not exactly famous for performance.

Most of my evenings have been spent working on the upcoming issue of RPG Review and our AGM for the end of the month. In honour of Terry K Amthor, we're doing a special edition on ICE games and settings and I've been plodding my way composing an article to "fix" the magic system used in Middle-Earth Role-Playing for that setting. MERP was derived from Rolemaster, and Rolemaster was, by default, set in a highly visually magical setting of Amthor's Shadow World, whereas in Tolkien most magical expressions were somewhat more subtle and naturalistic. On another related matter I've been picking up just a few items to add to my RPG collection; when I conducted a sizeable sell-off two years ago to donate to Médecins Sans Frontières for their coronavirus efforts, I sold off some items that I probably should have kept as mementoes. Re-acquiring such items does look like it will somewhat more expensive than my notoriously generous pricing, but of course, I have the option to be more selective. All in good time, and this weekend I'm spending a short holiday at Phillip Island.

It is easy to forget that it's been a few days since I've posted anything, especially given that the first three of those days were delivering high performance computing training workshops. Whilst I am sure newcomers get a lot out of the first two, the third (Regular Expressions) was perhaps the most interesting to me, especially as I've reviewed the course to include a great deal more about incorporating regexes into HPC job submission scripts and even after the course adding content about how to further incorporate GNU parallel. I rather get the feeling that there is potentially too much content from such a tool and, with the potential addition of parallel processing using Python as an introduction (compared to C and Fortran), I might have to split my existing workshop into two. Another project for 2022, I guess.

Most of Victoria's restrictions were eased on Thursday, for the fully vaccinated, having reached close to 90%+ double-dose vaccination for those aged 12 or older. On the first night out caseopaya and I went to a concert; Vivaldi's 'Four Seasons' at The Athenaeum Theatre, a rather charming "old Melbourne" venue. We originally booked to see Tchaikovsky's "Swan Lake" but, 'rona being what it was, caused three cancellations of that performance. Played in shopping centres everywhere, "Le quattro stagioni" was quite an innovative group of concertos for its time for its naturalistic representations, and this concert certainly represented that style faithfully, also interspersing with the somewhat less well-known sonnets, before concluding with part II of the Sønderho Bridal trilogy.

Today ventured into the city with a meeting of the Victorian Secular Lobby, especially discussing the third attempt of the Federal government to introduce it's "religious discrimination" bill. A number of people also attended online but I rather failed to account for the effects of ambient noise in an open environment. The city was also had a number of protestors of the anti-vaccination, anti-employment mandates, anti-pandemic legislation which, as has been observed, are very much based on "outrage first, detail second" (if ever) and are very prone to the most foolish conspiracies (I've seriously seen "zombie apocalypse" claims) but more disturbingly, the advocacy of violence. In both cases, I suspect that the relevant legislation will be passed by the end of the year, with amendments.

At midnight tonight Melbourne opens up, somewhat, having reached a 70% double-dosed vaccination level; really I we need about 90%+. I am not particularly comfortable with this given that there are currently over 20,000 active cases in Victoria, compared to just over 5,000 in New South Wales. One can simply urge people to be careful, be cautious, keep an eye on those numbers, and avoid the unvaccinated like the plague. Because, if the math is right, these figures will increase and very quickly, and this will weigh very heavily on healthcare workers. Apropos, I have also taken the opportunity to correspond with the primary author of a Burnet Institute report which last year pointed out the Melbourne lockdown prevented 18,686 cases in July, and he gave me the data for August of this year - instead of 5,643 cases for that month, we had 1,001.

But on this note, what's the wildest vaccine conspiracy you've encountered? Today, a person was trying to tell me (after claiming that vaccinators would be prosecuted "under the Nuremberg code") that "the pedos" had paid bribe money to medical administrators across thousands of GP clinics across Australia to falsify vaccination numbers over the last year and continue to do. When I asked for their motivation they responded "they're pedos" and said that they would categorize me in the same if I didn't "do my research". They did claim they're doing a PhD on this particularly novel research, although they couldn't tell me which institution has accepted their candidacy. They did tell me that that they were a scientist and widely educated. However, they couldn't tell show me any recent journal publications under their name. I followed their LinkedIn profile and they have (or at least studied) a Diploma in Recreation (Fitness), a Diploma in Early Childhood Education, and a Diploma in Business. They also claim to have a Masters in Public Administration, but that's from a production company that they run not an accredited educational institution. I don't think they liked me pointing this out to them!

Much of the past several days, even in my nominal personal hours, have been spent on work-related tasks. This includes adding exam content for the HPC Certification Forum (we had a board meeting last night), submitting an abstract for eResearchNZ for next year on the same, attending the Victorian GPGPU Symposium (great presentation on machine learning for global weather predictions), and a workshop for NCI's supercomputer. My sole non-work-related seminar was China From the Inside, hosted by the Victorian Fabian Society, which was quite worthwhile and will help in my own evolving perspective on said country.

Because I was not in a good place for quite some time, I found myself ignoring the looming deadline for the book chapter "Monitoring HPC Systems Against Compromised SSH" for CRC Press. Well, with a Herculean effort over the past several days I powered through what needed to be done and made the word count. The most fun day was Monday where I wrote a thousand words and subtracted eleven hundred, but all writers and programmers know what that is like. As Ken Thompson once quipped; "One of my most productive days was throwing away 1,000 lines of code." Currently, my co-authors are checking over it and have submitted a couple of patch files. The editor is happy, so it looks like another publication relating to supercomputing is in the pipeline. In somewhat related news I also attended a meeting of Linux Users of Victoria last night on containerisation, probably the first one I have been to since I stepped down from being on the committee for fifteen years or so. The meeting struck me as being more conversational than the presentation-and-QandA format that I am familiar with, but such is the nature of different people running a show.

As a profession, the dual role of supercomputer engineer and educator does, of course, accord pretty reasonable compensation for what is often some challenging tasks (I've just spent two days building a recent version of TensorFlow and its dependencies from source). But of course, my main motive is to provide the computational support for the various empirical scientists who are trying to make the world a better place. I have mentioned in the past how incredible it is that we have vaccines at all for SARS-CoV-2, and I know quite well there are several research teams on Spartan who are working in that area. Nevertheless, public health is not just medicine, but also policy. This is why yesterday I found myself penning some words for the Isocracy Network on public health policy as the pandemic reaches four million confirmed deaths. I acknowledge I am especially concerned with what appears to be the beginnings of a disaster (because I can do cumulative math) on Thailand and Indonesia, and probably Malaysia as well, with the Delta variant of the virus, a lack of vaccines, and poor social regulation.

Wilful awareness of such issues, and even solutions, is a great challenge to my sensitivities which can induce feelings of depression and helplessness. "This is the bitterest pain among men, to have much knowledge but no power" (Herodotus, Book 9, Ch. 16). It is appropriate then that I've spent much of this evening composing my thoughts about the terribly boring topic of electoral systems, with a view of contributing a few design ideas about how to encourage better public representation. Because if we find ourselves to be ruled by incompetent and corrupt fools there are two causes; the first is that there are incompetent and corrupt fools (fixing that is more the domain of psychology) and secondly because our political system has provided opportunities for such people to acquire power. Providing a considered alternative system and a path to achieving it is a worthwhile endeavour in its own right, "another world is possible", as has been said. In the meantime, within my own profession and outside, I do what I possibly can. Knowing that I am using my knowledge and skills for compassionate purposes brings solace. I hope it is a feeling that remains.

Readers will know that I've given regular updates on the progression of The Plague. We're now at 172 million cases, and 3.7 million dead. To think a year ago those numbers were "only" 6.7 million and 420 thousand respectively. I have much to say about our political and economic leaders who have failed to give this pandemic the requisite seriousness, let alone the conspiracy theorists. But such a discussion will wait for another day because now the plague has gotten personal with one of my dearest friends entering isolation following exposure at a Tier One site, and a workmate losing a very close relative (albeit overseas). So as Melbourne goes into an extended lockdown with this highly infectious Kappa variant my thoughts turn to them - and indeed every single one of you, dear readers - thinking of what ways I can possibly help or give solace in their time of need.

For someone who is extroverted, gregarious, and enjoys the physical company of other members of the species, I have found the past several days tougher than I should. I even feel a little embarrassed to admit this, given the circumstances of others, but even with a daily bike ride in the sunshine to the Darebin parklands, other exercise and healthy eating, some wonderful meetings with friends over video-conferencing, etc, I am still deeply missing the company of people with flesh and blood. The most conversation I've had with a person in immediate proximity this week has been a few words exchanged with a shopkeeper. Still, I am in good company alone and have taken advantage of the situation to delve into studies (masters thesis, civil engineering, Mandarin) and preparations for the (extensively delayed) move.

The preceding three days have also witnessed day-workshops for researchers in the form of "Introduction to Linux and Supercomputing", "Advanced Linux and Shell Scripting", and "Parallel Processing with OpenMP and MPI". The former two I have been giving every month during the past several months and the latter is one of a group that I circulate through as a more advanced or specialised subject. Class attendance was good, the questions and feedback excellent, and the final remark by one researcher (themselves a bit of a leading expert on the genomic sequencing of wallabies) after the three days was really super-positive: "Thank you, Lev! You're an excellent educator. Have really enjoyed these sessions." I personally find it incredible that anyone could say such a thing after listening to me ramble on about using supercomputers and parallel programming after three days, but apparently some people like it. Certainly, it is affirmative statements like that which keep me going in this profession.

On Monday and Tuesday this week I delivered workshops on introductory and advanced Linux, HPC, and shell scripting. It was preceded by an exciting moment on Sunday as my laptop power cable caught on fire. There was a short panic for a while, but I managed to source a replacement at a local OfficeWorks (awful website, good staff). Yesterday was part one of another course, but this time as a recipient, an NVIDIA CUDA programming "boot camp". I have done this before, a few years ago, and their delivery hasn't really improved (honestly people, andragogy is a formal and learned skill), but there are some significant improvements in content. I have also announced another workshop in a week's time for those who want to transition from Spartan to Gadi, Australia's most powerful supercomputer.

Yesterday I completed the two pre-recorded lectures for eResearchAustralasia, virtual conferences being a thing these days. The conference organisers however have required the videos be uploaded to DropBox which is the wrong tool for the job; so far I'm getting consistent timeout errors at around 15% for the long paper and 25% for the short paper. At times the level of basic information technology illiteracy in academia and research (let alone business) leaves me flabbergasted - and then there's the recent story of how 50,000 people missed out on self-isolation in the UK as records were being kept on an Excel spreadsheet.

With a particular interest in organisational, educational, and positive psychology, I have enrolled in a GradDipPsych for next year. Whilst I have had a long interest in the topic, I have no formal training. As such, I've started an introductory MOOC on the subject from the University of Toronto. It's all pretty basic stuff, but quite interesting and well presented, and as is my want on such things, I'm flying through it at a rate of a week's worth of material every two days, and rather suspect I will finish it well before the four others I am currently doing. As a person who is very interested in the delivery of content via online means (four of my five degrees have been acquired in such a manner), I am very interested in hearing stories from others on what works for them, what doesn't, and why, especially given the non-completion rates.

There's been a small flurry of the articles on the Isocracy Network in the past few days; my own contribution, just posted, is a comparison between New Zealand and Sweden for dealing with the novel coronavirus. Wes Whitman has contributed a piece on the economic policies of James Meade, a rather under-rated 20th-century economist. Finally, there is new contributor Derek Wittorff on "The Radicalism of Systems Theory". All bodes well for tomorrow's annual general meeting of the Isocracy Network which will be held over Jisti.

Today I also completed a massive, three-thousand-word, review of The War of the Worlds, including the original book, the radio drama, the musical version, and the most recent film; I couldn't resist adding a little bit of discussion of coronavirus into the mix as well. On a different aesthetic orientation, there is my own health and personal body sculpting, as I've remained at consistent weight for the past three weeks, and there are still several kilograms I wish to shed. As a result, I am also doubling-down on the exercise I do and have built myself a small collection of industrial-EBM tunes to listen to as I do so.

Work-wise my usual tasks have taken a step back this past few days as I've made some major revisions to the parallel programming (OpenMP, MPI, OpenACC, CUDA) programming courses that I'll be conducting on Monday and Tuesday next week, along with courses on regular expressions and running jobs on Australia's peak HPC system the fortnight after that, then there's an additional course on mathematical programming in an HPC environment (Octave, R, Mathematica, etc). All-in-all it's been many thousands of words written and re-written over the past several days, all of which will provide lasting content. It's almost as if words have a deep and special meaning to me; that words, especially matters of promising and forgiveness (as Hannah Arendt famously pointed out) have redemptive power to the human spirit. There is much more I could say about that, but that will have to wait a few more days.

The past three days I've spent most of my work time conducting HPC training classes, the standard introductory class, shell-scripting, and finally parallel programming. As has happened in the past, by the end of the third day I'm quite exhausted and this time even more so than usual. It doesn't help that the final part of the third day is the most difficult, debugging message passing programs and I found myself making some simple mistakes at the end. My researcher-students were very kind in offering some supportive comments, especially after I mentioned that I was beginning to lose concentration after three days of lecturing for about five hours straight each day. The poor bastards, imagine having to put up with me talking to you for five hours? They put up with for three days. After today's class, I also had a board meeting of the international HPC Certification Forum, which is seeing some useful progress with the injection of some new contributors; slowly the tortoise advances. On a related note, given the content, I have received the feedback for my second assignment in my MHEd studies at the University of Otago; a pretty good grade again, although I am amused by the insistence of providing me what is effectively a B++ rather than an A-. Many years ago as an honours student I received such a grade and asked my assessor why on earth they just didn't give me an A-. Their answer was unforgettable; "Oh, we want you to work harder". There is a reason why my 'blog is subtitled 'Diary of a B+ grade polymath'.

I have had recent challenges to inner stoic, which has led me down the path of reading The Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, something that I have not touched for decades. There are many things I find disagreeable about the Stoics of course; the fact they place virtue prior to action or motive in ethics, their dogmatic appeal to nature, and their physics is obviously contrary to contemporary evidence. Nevertheless, there is much to be gained by their emphasis on asceticism, and especially the mental training to concern oneself with the things that are you can actually control and what actually matters; although I do strongly agree with the critique that there are an empirical reality and physiological needs that have priority. Modern stoicism has, of course, has encounters with utilitarianism, Marxism, and the recognition of the similarity with some of the mental approaches and ethical systems in some versions of Buddhism. It is perhaps of the latter matter that a special highlight in recent days was catching up on a video-conferencing session with my old friend Glenn K. Way back in 1996 we shaved our heads and went on a Buddhist pilgrimage by hitch-hiking from Melbourne to the temple in Woolongong for the Year of the Rat. It was quite an epic tale, and one day I promise to write down this strange and wonderful "on the road" trip.

Having reached the half-way point in my Masters in Higher Education, and have selected research interests for the dissertation next year (online education, andragogy, and the economics of higher education) - with my own researcher page at the University of Otago, I have also been allocated a supervisor, Associate Professor Joyce Koh, who seems pretty close to perfect based on their research profile. Meanwhile, I have received the examiner's comments for my Master of Science dissertation, Is the Future of Business Software Proprietary or Free and Open-Source? A Macroscopic Information Systems Investigation, from the University of Salford. Whilst I do not find out what the final grade is for a few weeks, the comments themselves were sufficiently glowing that I can be quietly confident that I've done quite well.

Apropos matters concerning proprietary and open-source software I have recently that the opportunity to install Ubuntu Linux as a virtual machine on MS-Windows 10 systems with VirtualBox as the hypervisor. This is, of course, not a path I would normally take (in the Nectar research cloud the reverse is far more common), but circumstances being what they are I've taken the opportunity to jot down a few notes on the procedure, just in case I need to do it again, and just in case somebody else out there needs to do it as well. I have been contacted a number of times in the past that the notes I leave out there in on the public Internet have helped quite a few people with technical tasks, university assignments, and personal research, so I see no point in stopping that now. Further, for next week, I have a day-class to teach on Monday, Linux and HPC for Mechanical Engineering, followed by a workshop on Wednesday for the HPC Certification Forum with the snappy title, Training and Curriculum Development for International HPC Certification.

In the aesthetic dimension, in recent weeks I've made some effort to fill in the blanks of Studio Ghibli films that I had not previously seen, as I am terrible uninformed of popular culture (it is difficult to be an aficionado of high culture and pop culture simultaneously unless it's a full-time occupation). Specifically this includes Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, Castle in the Sky, Only Yesterday, Pom Poko, Whisper of the Heart, and My Neighbors the Yamadas. There are certainly some common thematic contents across the range, including the fantastic, environmental issues, coming of age stories, and romance (especially from the female perspective), and the virtues (and problems) of common people in contrast to the use of heroic characters. I think of the set I prefer Castle in the Sky most of all as it includes all the aforementioned elements and executes them well, and My Neighbors the Yamadas least, which struck me more as a first draft rather than a finished product.

World COVID-19 confirmed cases are now at 2.7 million, with 190,000 deaths. The United States is now over 32% of the total number of confirmed cases, and almost 50,000 dead. The Western European countries, still among the worst hit, are managing to slow their number of cases and fatalies down, although the numbers are still far too high. Following pestilence, famine is the next horseman of the apocalypse. As COVID-19 begins to creep into the developing world, there are now serious challenges to the world's food supply, and the possibility of famine is growing, the extent that the leadership of the World Food Programmer are describing a potential disaster of Biblical proportions. It is in the context that I am making a fairly significant personal decision; as friends would know, I have a more-than-significant collection of tabletop RPGs; around $50,000 worth last time I bothered to do a rough calculation. Whilst I have casually traded items in the past, I am going to start doing so in earnest with the proceeds donated to Médecins Sans Frontières, one of my favourite charities. It is just another step in my future life decisions to make every effort to make life more tolerable for those in the worst situations.

The past few days I've been conducting training workshops using the University's video conferencing; the first class, in particular, had a lot more researchers attending that what had registered (close to forty). I had concerns over the capacity of my home Internet's bandwidth to cope with such a large number, but with video and audio feeds turned off (questions were raised in chat), it all coped reasonably well. Two of the courses were pretty stock standard, Introduction to High Performance Computing Using Linux and Advanced Linux and Shell Scripting for HPC, the third is less regular, GPU Applications and Programming. I've been swotting up a bit on the latter because, to be honest, I haven't done any GPU programming myself since the last time I conducted the course and there have been some changes in the system. It is, in some ways, quite flattering to have so many research on the waitlist for my courses (it's around 700), it is nice to be wanted an all that, but I don't scale. Even if I manage 30 or so at a time, once a month, the difficulty in getting through the set is obvious. Maybe I should ask the powers in charge if I can increase to multiple class sets per month. I'll be exhausted, but it will be worth it. I help maintain systems and teach researchers how to use them so that they can provide the results that help make the world a better place. This no mere fancy; massive macroeconomic modelling indicates that the social return on investment in High Performance Computing is $44 return (savings or profits) per dollar invested. I wouldn't work in this industry if it wasn't the case.